Continued from last week: What did Google’s new Head of Travel for South-east Asia, Ali Yilmaz, discover when he set out to answer the question; “If I am a small hotel and had money for only one thing – website or Facebook – what should I do?”

He found two pieces of research. A Goldman Sachs report on “Channel Effects on Online Shopping” found that search engines have the highest influence on shopping activity with 31% of respondents saying they used search engines, followed by 27% who used recommendation engines and only 5% used social networks. (See Chart A)

Another piece of research from GroupM on “Role of Search & Social on Purchase” showed that most customers start with search (58%), followed by company websites (24%) and social media (18%).

However in terms of “Converting Usage in the Purchase Process”, the research showed that search accounted for 51%, search + social 48% and social only, 1%. (See Chart B)

Close to 64% of respondents though are more likely to follow a brand on social media.

To him, therefore, search and social are and-or and not either-or. They are complementary.

But it’s not all about just search or social. He said the travel experience could be unbundled into dreaming, researching, booking, holiday and sharing.

In the dreaming stage, customers look at videos or pictures. In researching, they may study sites like Trip Advisor. In booking, it’s perhaps on an OTA or a company branded website. Sharing happens during the holiday and after – mobile is most used for sharing during the holiday, depending of course on data roaming charges.

“As a supplier, you have to be present at every stage of the process and try and influence the customer to choose you.”

But given the fragmentation of the travel process – the multiple channels for one – how can a small travel company even dream of influencing the customer at every step in every channel?

Yilmaz laughed. “It’s hard when you don’t have the budgets but you can be creative. You have to be willing to try and fail.”

Which brought us to the subject of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). With keywords becoming more and more expensive – and only the big brands being able to afford to spend hundreds of millions on Adwords – how can local brands, the very companies he wants to see succeed, compete in spending?

Firstly, he said keywords weren’t as expensive in Asia as in the US or Europe. So that’s good news. Ish.

Secondly, he said smaller companies could be more creative and bid on less competitive and niche keywords for cheaper and faster results. For example, if “Bangkok hotels” is a very competitive keyword, then they can go for hotel names or longer keywords.

“There are many ways you can dice and slice the game,” he said. “You need to be curious enough to read, understand and measure the system, there are many small businesses who have created success stories out of Adwords”

Perhaps, I said this is why social media’s becoming more of a darling than search because social media has the lower entry barrier. It’s free, for one.

“Yes, but does it give you results? It all comes down to measurements. It may have a lower entry barrier but what’s the point if it doesn’t convert to sales.”

With Google now the world’s largest search engine followed by YouTube at second place (owned by Google of course), does the travel industry have much to fear from the Googleplex particularly in light of the recent purchase of ITA Software?

You can tell it’s a question he’s been asked often. Google bought ITA Software because it felt it could do a better job with air travel search. Also, ITA is an engineering company that loves data and does everything around data; same as Google.

The Department of Justice’s condition, when it approved the US$700 million deal, was that existing ITA Software customers are given access to the company’s QPX software.

“We have no intention of being a travel agent or a travel meta search – what we are focused on is making search better for consumers and opening the doors to businesses at the time of the purchase. What businesses do when the customer lands on their website is up to them,” said Yilmaz.

I also found it interesting that prior to Google, Yilmaz spent his time with IBM – oh how the world has changed since those Big Blue days.

IBM, MS and Google are considered to be the game changing milestones in the technology world; corporate computing, personal computing and Internet technologies respectively. Hence, the gap of change in technology is narrowing, he noted. Between IBM and Microsoft there were 65 years, between Microsoft and Google there are 20 years.

The next change might happen sooner. What that change will be who knows. “There’s a new technology coming that will disrupt the way people do business, and it is not one company this time.”

Mobile is the closest thing he can think of that might bring the next disruption. “If you think that by 2013, when more people will access the web through mobile devices than through their laptop, that’s got to be the next change.

As for when “search” will become “find”, he said that’s not too far off as well.

He isn’t too enamored with the Groupon model, “where the deals find you”. “I am getting too many deals everyday that are not relevant to me. May be they think I will use them for my wife or children but they have got to get better at knowing their customers when targeting the deals.”

But the day when I can type in the words “I have $500. I have 5 days off. I am looking for a resort” and do an open-ended search for inspiration is close, he believes. Some companies are already taking stabs at it, he said.

For Google, however, the core business remains as Search. On top of that, they are working intensely on display – text, banner and video, mobile – Android, and Chrome, its browser and cloud operating system.

Hail the Three Towers of the Google Kingdom.